Hello and welcome to Happier, a podcast about how to be as happy, healthy, productive, and calm as we can be

under the circumstances. And these days we are in difficult circumstances. This week we're jumping

into our usual feed to do a bonus episode to discuss what we're all talking about.

COVID-19. I'm Gretchen Rubin and I'm Elizabeth Kraft and we are going to get through this together,

Gretchen. Yes, we are. So usually I'm recording in a studio in Midtown Manhattan, but today I am

talking to you from my apartment on the Upper East Side of Manhattan in New York City.

And I am in Encino and my house in my office. We're home. Yes, we are at home hunkering down.

So Gretchen people are obviously feeling overwhelmed with uncertainty and anxiety, so we thought

it would be great to talk together about this just extraordinary situation. So we decided to do

this bonus episode to suggest a few try this at homes to help everyone deal with the situation,

especially since we are all social distancing. Yes. And we're also going to talk about a few

happiness stumbling blocks that many, if not most of us, are facing. And we wanted to let you know

that because it is so helpful to talk about these issues, we're going to start doing a daily

Instagram live talk. We did one sort of on the fly the other day and we got such an enthusiastic

response. It's such a great conversation. We think it's worth doing regularly. So if you are

interested in joining these conversations, follow me on Instagram and I will post in my stories

when the next one is happening. Right now we're aiming to do it Monday through Friday every week

for the indefinite future. Yes. And Gretchen we figured out how to do split screen. So it's like

we're talking to each other. Yes. I do give us a gold star for how I mean it was easy, but I was

intimidated. I had a little trouble at the end as you will see I was like, where how do you end it?

But I did figure that it seems obvious that we are all going to be suing an anxiety for time to come.

So we are looking for ways to bring everyone together with a sense of connection, fun,

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